John B. “Barny” Dunning is an Associate Professor of Wildlife Ecology in the Department of Forestry and Natural Resources at Purdue. He received a B.S. in Biological Sciences from Kent State University (Kent, Ohio) in 1978, where he graduate summa cum laude and was elected a member of Phi Beta Kappa. He then received a Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from the University of Arizona (Tucson, Arizona) in 1986. Prior to coming to Purdue, Dr. Dunning held positions as a postdoctoral research associate and research scientist at the University of Georgia’s Institute of Ecology. During that time, he worked on the wildlife impact of forest management across large spatial scales at the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory in Aiken, South Carolina. This research was funded by grants from the Department of Energy, U.S. Forest Service and the National Science Foundation. He joined the faculty at Purdue in 1994, and was promoted to Associate Professor in 1999.
Barny teaches courses in environmental conservation, ornithology, global environmental issues, and conservation biology. In 2006, he was voted the department’s Outstanding Undergraduate Teacher by the undergraduate student body, and received the Richard L. Kohls Outstanding Undergraduate Teacher Award by the College of Agriculture. He has published over 75 research papers and 3 books. His research focuses on the effects of habitat change across large landscapes on native wildlife species. Much of this research has focused on various species of sparrows in grasslands, wetlands and other open habitats. Sparrows are representative of a large group of native songbirds found in non-forested habitats that have declined greatly in recent decades. His early work included collaborations with computer modelers to merge field-based ecological knowledge with simulation of projected landscape change to predict which species will be impacted most severely by proposed human land-use. More recently, Barny has made use of habitat restoration projects involving both Midwestern grasslands and wetlands to examine how native birds respond to the creation of habitat in new locations within landscapes. He is involved in the establishment of a long-term field experiment on forest management and its impacts on Indiana wildlife (the Hardwood Ecosystem Experiment) as a component of the Sustainable Hardwood Ecosystems area of excellence.
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